Last night was a big night for Ian and me; it was Ian's first night snow camping!
The last time I went snow camping at Mt. Rainier, the snow was bulletproof. What a difference a month of (what seems like non-stop) snow made up there. Based off of what the Park Ranger told us when we registered, we chose a place I hadn't been before. He was spot on, and aside from a visit from a fox in the middle of the night (we saw it's prints the next morning), we had the place to ourselves.
There were no views of the Tatoosh Mountains, which turned out to be okay since clouds rolled in and stayed thick until well after 9am the next morning. We did, however, have an excellent view of Mt. Rainier playing peak-a-boo with the clouds.
We both slept reasonably warm, but woke up early. That gave us some time to lazily enjoy some coffee and hot cocoa, which helped to warm us up a bit, too.
We were 15 minutes from the parking lot, making the trip in and out relatively short. It also meant that once we realized that we had forgotten Ian's book in the car, that it was no problem to walk back to get it once we had our camp set up. We were also super close to the sled hill. Because we had spent the night up there, we had the hill to ourselves (priceless). I doubt you'll find a sledding hill anywhere near as awesome as this one!
And since I've been playing around with video recently, enjoy one of Ian's trips down the mountain.
Have a great day everybody!
Marc
